After a little time, a serving man entered with a covered trencher, in which lay, smoking hot, one half of a small salmon. When Tullochcarron lifted the cover, he eyed it with something like contempt, and impelled as he was by his irresistible disease, he fell upon it, and devoured it with an alacrity that astonished every beholder. A whole salmon, but of moderate size, was then brought in, and was instantly attacked by Tullochcarron with as much avidity as if he had not eaten a morsel. Wonderfully and fearfully did he go on to clear his way through it; but as he approached the conclusion of it, his jaws began to go rather more languidly than before. Ballindalloch observed this.
“Ho there! bring more salmon!” cried he aloud.
“No,” said Tullochcarron, shoving the trencher from him, and wiping his knife and fork in his napkin, and sticking them into his dirk sheath. “No, no; I have enough. Ballindalloch, my lands shall be yours the moment the breath is out of my body.”
“Nay, then,” said Ballindalloch, “I must in truth and honesty confess that I called for more salmon but as a bravado; for thou hast indeed finished all the salmon that was in the house, and it is my grey gelding that is thine, not thy lands that are mine.”
“It matters not, Ballindalloch,” replied the other. “The lands of Tullochcarron are thine notwithstanding. See, there are the writings which I had made out the week after my poor Duncan was so foully murdered. Thou wilt find that thy name was then inserted therein. I but seized on this of the wager as a whimsical means of breaking the matter to thee; and now thou mayest make of Tullochcarron what it may please thee. I shall not stand long in the way, poor decayed sproutless stock as I am! and I have now known enough of thee to be convinced that thou wilt not see me kicked over before my time; but that thou wilt take care of me during the brief space that I may yet cumber this earth, and see me laid decently beside Duncan when I die.”
Such then, gentlemen, was the way in which the lands of Tullochcarron came to be united to those of Ballindalloch,—ane union, the which I am told, did vurra much impruv the value of both, and which still subsists to the present day.
ANTIQUARIAN DISCUSSION.
Clifford.—Why, this is the best story I have heard for many a day, for it has both salmon and salmon fishing in it.
Author.—The secret is out now about the fairies and the peel-tower, and, for my own part, I shall never in future doubt the prévoyance and judgment of these good people. Aware, as they must have been, that fate had decreed the lands of Tullochcarron to be merged in those of Ballindalloch, and seeing that this coming event would render the commanding site of Ballindalloch’s proposed peel-tower utterly valueless, as he would no longer have any enemy’s territory to overlook, their regard for his interest induced them to drive him out of his fancy, and to compel him to descend into the delightful repose and shelter of the beautiful haugh below.